Atari 2600

The Atari 2600, first sold in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, made swappable game cartridges the norm for home consoles. Its programmers had 128 bytes of RAM and drew every line of the picture as the TV beam passed, a trick known as racing the beam.

It stayed on sale until 1992. Its games run from arcade conversions such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man to originals such as Adventure and Pitfall!, most of them played with the joystick and its single button.

More info

• Atari, Inc. · 1977–1992
• Second generation
• EmulatorJS · Stella 2014
• 372 games
• 34,062,514 plays